Hook, Line, and Sinker
by Phoenix Satori
Summary: The first time he meets her, she’s drowning herself in his ocean. ::Poseidon/Sally::
1. chance encounter

The first in a series of four or five related drabbles concerning Percy's mommy-kins and that water-logged god-dude in beach shorts, and the Events Leading Up to Percy-poo's Conception.

I can't promise you that Phoebus Apollo won't eventually worm his way into the fic and attempt some form or other of poetry, and I also can't guarantee that I won't shamelessly plagiarize _Zork: The Grand Inquisitor _(the most batshit ridiculous, fantastically marvelous game ever made), but I hope you'll enjoy this UNADULTERATED MADNESS nevertheless.

[all i own is my own fanatical love of greco-roman lore. apart from that...? nada.]

* * *

_::Sally Jackson meets a god, and his ravening Giant Squid::_

The first time he meets her, she's busy drowning herself in his ocean. Not intentionally, he later learns, though why else she'd have been out past the shoals with such exceptionally _horrendous _swimming aptitude unless she'd been meaning to kill herself, he has no idea.

(A good while after the fact, she will defend, huffing sulkily all the while, that her swimming aptitude is 'just fine, thanks, when huge, fuck-off Cthulhus aren't trying to _eat_ _me for lunch_.')

Belatedly, it occurs to him that Davy the Kraken flopping about on the water like a horrifying, eight-tentacled, colossus-puppy in such alarming proximity probably isn't doing much in the way of improving her technique.

Arching a brow and settling his chin against the heel of his palm, he leans into the salty spray, closing his eyes and releasing a careful, shuddering breath, melting into the briny deep between one heartbeat and the next, a coalescence of divine quiddity and natatory spirit, cool and wild and powerful, fathomless and eternal.

He slips into his primordial skin, becoming effortlessly the element for which he was named; Davy startles, subsiding with an anxious, bellowing croon that quivers through the water with an agonizing, slogging rhythm -and then he _feels _her.

Curiously, every desperate lance of her lithe arms through the claustrophobic vacuum of his aqueous flesh sinks her deeper, and swathed around her as he is, Poseidon feels the hot terror of her lungs filling with water. Little more than the blink of an eye is all he requires to enfold her securely in his current, baby eddies wrapped like jewelry at her wrists and ankles, speeding her to the surface before she has the chance to actualize what he can only assume is an unimaginative attempt to loose her mortal coil. (Hades gets this one over his _Tartarus-entombed body_.)

She breaks the surface seconds later with a huge, gulping gasp of a breath, shaking with adrenaline and muscle strain and, very probably, the chilly Almost-Encounter with his oily, brooding bastard of a brother.

He deposits her carefully at the feet of his human-shaped husk, washing back into solid form just as she crawls onto her arms and knees and begins choking and dry heaving in frightful proximity to his Holy Pearls.

It's not nearly as appealing as it sounds.

When at last she's breathing somewhat normally, he aims a furrowed brow into the clear sky, and the wind whispers her name as it whistles past.

"Oh." Sally Jackson says to Poseidon's crotch.

Startled, she snaps her gaze up to his, and he finds her wonderfully stunning in that mesmerizing, ephemeral way of mortals. "You're blowing glue." She whispers, and the Earthshaker appraises her worriedly, wondering if this means she's concussed. Or possibly deranged.

"Pardon?" She gives an embarrassed little twitch, and all the blood in her body boils up attractively into her cheeks, an endearing, bashful flush that pulls him inextricably closer.

"You're glowing blue." She amends, and then blinks bewilderedly up at him, like she maybe understands this announcement sounds slightly less-than-sane.

Before he has time to wonder what this means, exactly, she jerks back with a flustered, "_Oh_!", fumbling over her own knees and feet and fingers, and he chuckles gaily when she hops to her feet and points over her shoulder at the emerging Kraken, flailing a gesture of frantic alarm and shrieking –mostly incoherently—about the enormous cruise ship-sized sea monster popping out of the water, coming to devour them whole, and yes, she knows she probably sounds certifiable, but he's just got to trust her for a moment or three and 'run like Hades' (which is an expression he's not sure he's heard in at least half-a-century, so it's a bit jarring) before they're flattened and then eaten like the tiny, delicious little people snacks they are.

In response to her histrionics, he slides her a slow, contemplative grin. She shifts nervously under his scrutiny and then threatens to bludgeon him into unconsciousness with a rock and _drag _him to safety if she has to, and when her eyes flick cursorily over the vast array of Bludgeoning Instruments immediately available to her, he decides she's just about the most captivating creature he's met in a couple hundred years, at least.

Poseidon's been around long enough to know an Extraordinary Mortal when he sees one. Sally Jackson's clearly impervious to the obfuscations of the Mist; he can't remember the last time a human had perceived the azure aspect of his divinity –auras are pesky, impossible things to conceal on the best of days, and mostly he refuses to bother trying. Most mortals can't see them, anyway, so it usually isn't worth the effort.

Also, the young Miss Jackson appears to be quite aware of the fact that his Rather Substantial Pet Squid _is_ a Rather Substantial Squid (even if she _can't_ discern that said Squid is –mostly—harmless), as opposed to a school of bloodthirsty sharks or a massive tidal wave or whatever it is these naive, primitve beasts fool themselves into seeing when Davy surfaces to play fetch with her master.

Speaking of which—

He clears his throat softly, and Davy the Kraken slips silently back into the murky depths.

Meanwhile, Sally's trying to pull him from his craggy seat on the rock outcropping, using the whole of her –fairly unimpressive—weight to attempt to haul him bodily away from the perceived nautical terror, and he's using the opportunity to inappropriately admire the toned length of her legs.

At length, it dawns on lovely Sally that she's being (not-so-subtly) ogled, and it's somewhere around this point that she manages to conveniently set aside her Dread-Panic long enough to smash him roundly in the face with her knee.

Poseidon thinks he's probably in love.

* * *

Yeah, you read that right.

Davy the Kraken is a LADY Kraken.

Bow-chick-a-bow-woooooow.

...um.


	2. interlude: apollo

I warned you about the possibility of an Apollo cameo. You thought I was JOKING, didn't you? YOU WOULDN'T BE SO LUCKY.

Meanwhile.

Possibly spoilers for Book Five, wherein we learn why Apollo's oracle is a shriveled leather sack of bones.

* * *

_::Apollo pays a family visit::_

"My mummy tells me you're about to do something fantastically unwise, Uncle." Poseidon shifts his nephew a bored, if challenging, look.

"You still keep in touch with that old bag of bones?" Apollo shrugs, flopping back onto an impromptu divan spun from sunlight.

"You may be surprised to learn my oracle's a _scintillating_ conversationalist, Uncle. A positively remarkable mortal." The sun god frowns, considering. "Or, you know, whatever she is nowadays." Ever a thespian, Apollo flicks his wrist, performing a (really rather unnecessary) deft twist of a supination to summon a lyre out of thin air, which he promptly sets to thrumming. The airy, tinkling tune that results bears suspiciously striking resemblance to "Mmmbop," a song Poseidon's relatively certain Zeus had strictly forbidden him from playing. Ever. "She's gotten _dreadfully_ cynical lately, though."

"Oh?" Poseidon wonders, feigning interest.

"Truthfully, Uncle. I'm beginning to suspect all this damned doomsaying is more for my benefit than anyone else's. Admittedly, gloom and doom are all _any_ of my oracles ever seem to foretell, but the portents seem especially, hmmm…_malignant _these days." Apollo's grimace develops a discerning aspect. "S'ppose I'd probably go a bit bonkers if I hadn't gotten any for…golly, has it been a _hundred_ years?" His nephew shudders in horror at the thought. "One of these days I've got to figure out why mummy-dearest won't _die_ already and make way for the next pretty little thing. You've got no idea how _morbid_ it is having to channel through that…that…_that_." Poseidon has never quite been able to keep up with Apollo's meandering babbling, but he supposes much of that owes to his careful habit of never listening to anything his idiot nephew has to say. "On the other hand, the desiccation's done wonders for her conversational aptitude. She's gotten loads more colloquial, you know."

"Fascinating." Poseidon rumbles, unimpressed.

"You won't believe; just the other day she found the most charming rhyme for 'stupid fu—'"

"Apollo," the Earthshaker cautions, reproving.

"A thousand pardons, Uncle." As always, the young god's deference is caught somewhere between sardonic and obsequious. "Anyway, more recently, my mummy's been saying some very peculiar things about _you_, of all deities. Not that she hasn't mentioned you before; just…she seems a bit…fixated. Obviously, I'm not too clear on the details, but the mention of such arresting phrases as 'affection for the curse of man,' 'highly and explicitly forbidden,' and 'impending catastrophe' got me to thinking. You haven't got a new squeeze, have you? Some leggy little brunette? Fiesty redhead? Daddy's going to be veeeeery upset, Uncle." Before Poseidon can attempt to convince Apollo otherwise (or do one better and attempt to mail his nephew to Tartarus), the sun god has snapped to stiff-backed, wide-eyed attention. Dread curls drowsily into the warmth of his stomach. "_Hold the phone_." Apollo whispers, Very Seriously, flicking two fingers neatly into the air to conjure a pair of sunglasses onto his face.

"By me," Poseidon groans, "_please_ not _another_ haiku, Phoebus."

"_Philandering's fun,_

_but Daddy's always watching._

_Birth control is grand_."

There are times when the great god of the sea wishes he, too, were capable of dying.

* * *

Next chapter: Zeus glowers meaningfully as Poseidon begins courting Sally. Amphitrite takes up knitting.


	3. first date

Sorry it's taken so long to update; got sucked into a Tawainese drama (which is WONDERFULAMAZINGWOW) which ate fifty hours of my life before I'd fully realized I'd invested so much time in watching it. And then of course I had to go back and watch it _again_...

Anyway! More Sally/Poseidon goodness, at long last. Next installment shouldn't take nearly as long to finish. Yep.

[nope.]

* * *

These modern mortal women were _impossible_. All this new-wave feminism and misandry and equal rights haberdashery.

What he wouldn't give for the Good Old Days, when it was more than acceptable to pop into a girl's bedroom, proclaim his godhood, and make with his Divine Fornication Privileges. These days he had to…ugh, _try_.

There was this whole tedious wooing business to bother with now, and though he'd long ago developed a crude sort of formula for going about it, even fancied himself something of an expert at the craft, that by no means meant he _liked_ it.

On the one hand, he rarely gets bored anymore of the pursuit, now that there's actually pursuit _required_. The prospect of challenge, of battle, makes each new lady uniquely enticing, each flower worth plucking. And in this modern world where he and the rest of the pantheon seem to be becoming increasingly obsolete, he'll take his action wherever he can get it. (When he thinks about it, he acknowledges this reality for what it is: desperately, grievously pathetic. Consequently, he's diligent about _not_ thinking on his shrinking importance.)

On the other hand, like any of his immortal relatives, he's never going to become accustomed to such concepts as patience, forbearance, nor the taxing exertions of genuine, sustained _effort_. When you have (_literally_) the entire world at your immediate beck and call, laid out before you to do with whatever you damn well please, it's difficult to reconcile yourself to such things as _waiting_ and _trying_.

Even more vexing in this changing game is this new-fangled notion of _rejection_, which prior to the advent of the twentieth century, had been so inconceivable a notion as to have never so much as crossed his mind. Now, to date, he's been turned down _twice_, once with disastrous consequences for the poor mortal girl caught up in the turbulent storm of his affections. He'd grown since then, of course; he made a solid effort _not_ to destroy things (homes, careers, cherished family pets) when females made it apparent they weren't interested.

Other fish in the sea and all that.

Until he meets Sally Jackson, that is.

* * *

Poseidon follows her for the better part of a week and half, learning her routine, her habits, memorizing the gliding tread of her feet on the surf, the auburn aspect of her dark hair in the sunlight, the pastry-rich perfume of her skin bleeding into the briny-tart fragrance of his ocean.

He prefers to call this from-afar-investigation Necessary Reconnaissance. His son, Triton, insolently names it Stalking. (Impertinent little bastard.)

Curiously, her run-in with Davy does not appear to have diminished her obvious fondness for the water. For three or four days, she does seem somewhat…on edge, maybe a bit cagey and definitely careful not to swim out past the shoals. But then, when it becomes apparent that no ancient horrors are going to emerge unbidden from the depths, he watches, rapt, as she loses herself in the ocean, face breaking periodically into joyous amazement as she swims aimlessly for hours on end, as she snorkels and splashes about with friends nearer to the sandbank, all but a creature of the sea herself.

When at last he has tired of merely studying her, he appears to her at last, emerging from the waves as a child of no more than eight or nine mortal years, garbed in floaties and swim trunks that cling, sopping, to his flesh. She's some distance back on the beach, watching the waves crash against the shore as Apollo slips behind the horizon with the sun and darkness descends.

Poseidon flops down beside her like he has every right and reason in the world to be there, and she blinks at him for a moment before something shrewd and sharp in her gaze alerts him to the fact that she's very probably not fooled by the façade.

"And who are _you_?" She wonders, voice playful. The sound of it is nearly as soothing as the lapping undulations of the sea.

"I'm here for the summer festival with my parents." He fibs, artlessly avoiding the actual question. She graciously lets it lie.

"Oh? And where _are_ your parents, kiddo?" Poseidon doesn't suppose telling her he chopped his father into tiny little pieces and condemned him to an eternity in Tartarus would be the appropriate way to break the ice, so instead he says,

"They're…around." Then, before she has the chance to ask anymore prying questions, "What're you doing out here all alone?" She looks very much like she wants to ask him the same question, but intuition apparently allows her to roll with this unusual circumstance, because she turns her keen smile away from him, focuses it back on his namesake, exhales,

"I love the sea." Poseidon thinks this bodes well for him. "When I'm here, it's difficult to pull myself away from it. It's all noise and smoke and machinery in the city." She pauses, lost to private musings for a brief spell. "I only get to come here to Montauk for the summer months; my parents…" Sally loses steam for an instant or four, and he perceives a deep sadness in the dispirited slump of her shoulders, heavy with untold tragedy. "My…my parents used to bring me, but for several years now I've just been coming up with friends from school. It's tradition, and the sea is…peaceful. Don't you think?" It occurs to him that she isn't speaking to him the way most mortal adults speak to children, with an unconscious air of insipid condescension, with an obvious awareness of the disparity in age. Instead, she's addressing him like an equal, the angle of her reflections bent with maturity and substance.

He likes that she knows that he isn't what he seems, and wonders what it is she Sees when she looks at him.

"I do. I, too, love the sea." He abandons all pretense of being a child, forsaking the miniature model for one more fully-developed, becoming in the blink of an eye a version of himself more closely matched in age with hers, which he estimates is around sixteen or seventeen.

"Well." She chuckles, remarkably unruffled about his Mighty Morphing Powers. As if she were _used_ to people miraculously changing shape before her very eyes. "I _should_ say," she begins, picking up the conversation wherever it was they'd left it, "I love the sea when giant tentacle monsters aren't trying to eat me for swimming in it. That was…unpleasant." Poseidon explodes with mirth, deep, booming laughter smashing into the empty air. The ocean rolls further up onto the beach in response, skimming their toes, soaking Sally's beach towel. "Although _some_ people seem peculiarly well-adjusted to the phenomenon." She anchors a pointed look in his direction.

"What can I say? I've got an affinity for giant tentacle monsters. And Davy wasn't trying to 'eat you,' you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"_'Davy_?'" She echoes, incredulous.

"I could introduce you, if you'd like. She's really quite endearing." She tilts her head to one side, wry expression settling onto her face.

"Are you asking me if I want to come and see your giant tentacle monster?" There is nothing innocent about the way she phrases the question, and nothing naïve or uncertain in the blue-green ocean of her eyes. He likes this very, _very_ much.

"If I were?" He hedges, drawn to her by a gravity he can't explain.

"Then I'd say I'd love to," Sally prefaces, before all the air goes out of her and she turns to give him her profile, "if I weren't…it's just that...I'm sort of seeing someone, actually. We haven't, hm…_officially_ gone out, but I promised we would before the summer was over. And it, it wouldn't be fair if I turned around and changed my mind just because I met some guy on the beach with superpowers." Her smile is this coy-brilliant glide of lips, somehow heartening around the diffident contrition in her eyes, soft and gray and profoundly empathetic.

Poseidon's first thought is that he's going to have to visit some old-fashioned Divine Wrath upon some hapless mortal boy unaware of the treacherous wrong he's inadvertently committed. Then he remembers he's evolved past the Vengeful Destruction phase of his existence, and takes a deep, steadying breath.

"Miss Jackson," he breathes, pulling her toward him by one sun-kissed elbow, and she just sort of lets him, anxious but unafraid, unfazed by his knowledge of her name, despite his never having asked for it.

"Yes?"

"Would it help if I refused to give you a choice in the matter? If I deny you volition, how can you possibly be held responsible for reneging?" He's slipping into grandiloquence, he realizes; something he only ever does when he's angry or very, very nervous.

"U-Uhm…I don't, I don't think it works like that…I couldn't, not in good conscience…" Is what she's saying, though her eyes, shifting now from bright and luminous to a darker hue, belie the substance of the words.

"Right, then." Between one startled yelp and the next, he's jerking her to her feet, scooping her deftly into his arms, and making determined strides toward the ocean, which hurries up to meet him, washing over his ankles to usher him home. He slants her a sly, winning smile, which she reciprocates with a resigned sigh he thinks sounds rather feigned.

"Just so you know, I don't put out on the first date, Fish Breath." His smile develops a sinister aspect while he quietly processes the improvised epithet. "Even if the first date _is_ twenty-thousand leagues under the sea."

"We'll just see about that." Sally Jackson's laughter rings clear and jubilant as he immerses them, cutting as fluidly through the water as if it were thin air. "Off we go."

And with that, they vanish into the depths.

(This is the _only_ fish in the sea, as far as he's concerned.)

* * *

Next chapter: Zeus is all like, 'wtf?' And Triton's all like, 'daaaaaaaamn.' And Apollo's all like, 'my GOD, I'm pretty.'

mmmmmmm tuna sammiches.


	4. interlude: aphrodite

Three chapters down, two to go. Next one should be up in a couple of days at the _latest_.

ALSO! I actually clarified some of the context this time, albeit only as author's notes at the end of the chapter, but I am marking this as PROGRESS.

Dagflabbit.

[technically, homer probably owns these characters. riordan only has rights to sally.]

* * *

_::Aphrodite makes an inconvenient deduction::_

Sordid love affair or no, Poseidon's got a whole world worth of oceans, rivers, inlets, and streams to govern, and when nereids from the Prince William Sound arrive at the palace to plead for his assistance, wailing frantically about the 'inky darkness' blanketing the water and decimating all manner of local marine life, he deploys Triton, together with a legion of Cyclopes and a small fleet of hippocampi, to take stock of the situation, mount an investigation, and undertake all necessary and appropriate rescue and retaliation efforts on his behalf.

Amphitrite, who of late has been particularly vitriolic (understandably so after the awkward introductions he'd had to make when he'd brought Sally to the mermaid court and found his wife already there, visiting her cousins), volunteers to go with them, out of what she claims is "crippling concern for her sister nereids," though as she readies to depart she makes it patently clear that her actual interest in leaving has very little to do with vicarious distress or magnanimous purpose and quite a bit more to do with rumors of "the majestic and powerful and marvelously _well-endowed_" Oceanus vacationing near Alaska, which, now he's thinking about it, should probably bother him a great deal more than it actually does.

When he learns some few days later of the true scope of the catastrophe visited upon his ocean channel (a calamity the little mortal morons have attempted to write off as an 'unfortunate accident'), he embarks at once for Olympus to consult with both his perpetually grumpy brother and his irritating, offensively idiotic nephew –the former for permission to instigate some devastating 'unfortunate accidents' of his own, the latter for prophetic advice regarding _where_, exactly, he should visit his Divine Retribution, where it will have the fewest possible repercussions for the planet and, at the same time, do the most damage to the puny, feckless creatures so unapologetically wreaking havoc on his Venerable Mother's design.

* * *

Poseidon is in the chamber hall for all of five seconds before the one relation he's been purposefully steering clear of Olympus to evade shimmers into existence before him, graceful and mesmerizing and dreadfully penetrating as ever, with a special, secretive smile she grins with lips eerily like Sally's.

Aphrodite folds one delicate hand out before her to blow him a kiss, winking mischievously as she reorders the seating arrangement with hardly a thought, cheeks flushed and eyes fairly glowing with undisclosed rapture.

Now conveniently occupying the space next to his, she slinks on bare feet to her throne, dropping with centuries-sharpened elegance into the gossamer seat. Once she has settled, she flicks a tart glance over her shoulder at him.

"Brother," the goddess speaks, tone honeyed and sweet, "you _reek_ of Forbidden Love." A little shiver of anticipation shudders through her, and Poseidon willfully checks the bubble of rancor threatening to rise within.

"Aphrodite," he acknowledges, patient, "_any_ love I undertake is forbidden. I'm _married_, you will recall?"

"Pish posh, Fish Breath." She looks quite pleased with herself when he startles at the handle, failing to compose himself in time to avoid the sharpness of her shifting visage. "Give me _some_ credit, will you? You've got the market cornered on slimy, scaly, and aquatic, no contest; but _I'm_ the expert here on licentious vulgarity and scandal." Malicious cunning transforms her features yet again, and he remembers abruptly what he frequently forgets about Aphrodite: that beneath the fatuous frivolity of her disposition, she is woman of harrowing eloquence and incisive intuition, and furthermore, that she is a force to be reckoned with. "Oh, poo. Don't look at me like that, you great big teddy bear, you." She simpers. He frowns. "Come, Brother, tell me alllllll about it. I only want to help you, you know." Poseidon gazes at her, incredulous. For all her shrewd conspiring, he doesn't know that she has _ever_ been able to conceal her _own_ love affairs; he would rather avoid her publicly bungling his, as well.

"Well-intentioned though you may in fact be, and generous as the offer is," he begins diplomatically, wishing to incur as little of her wrath as possible, "I have no idea what you're talking about, and as such, have no need of your assistance, Cousin." The goddess of love and beauty glares murderously at him. One thing he has _never_ forgotten of her is that she can't stand being out-of-the-loop, and more than even that, she _despises_ being denied –anything, ever. "It's clearly slipped your mind that my brothers and I made an accord, for the sake of the mortal world—"

"—to be very, very careful not knock any poor girl up, yes I'm aware." Her lips slide into an easy smile. "Or to be very, _very_ discreet about it if you do." Outrage overtakes him.

"Aphrodite, I would be careful with my assumptions--!"

"Brother," she silences him with marble cool, petal soft fingers pressed gingerly across his mouth, "I made no mention of The Pact because I hadn't realized it was…_relevant_." Poseidon realizes his mistake immediately, and deflates. "I don't recall the three of you proscribing adultery; you'd have fooled none of us with that. The only thing explicitly outlined as 'against the rules' regarding your dalliances was…the gift of progeny, if I recall?" School girl delight brightens her countenance, and this time the resemblance her face bears to Sally's is so striking he very nearly forgets who's really in front of him. "So why, Brother, _why_ would you mention The Pact if you weren't intending to bestow some pretty young thing—but, that's silliness. You would never betray your brothers' trust, would you?" She flounces backward, elegant even in play, and Sally's eyes smile back at him. "Besides, the young Miss Jackson is far too young for the challenges of motherhood."

He's on his feet in an instant. Aphrodite was playing him for a fool; she _knew_, and _had_ known, all along.

"_You_—" He begins, only to be cut off yet again, this time by the ear-splitting crack of thunder heralding the arrival of his golden-glorious asshat of a brother.

Apollo pops in right after him, flipping a compact mirror deftly shut as he does so, whipping the accessory out of existence when he turns a gleefully inquisitive look on the warring pair at the far end of the chamber.

"_Who's_ too young for the challenges of motherhood?" The sun god pries, titillated. Zeus, beside him, cuts Poseidon a glower chock full of bloody, terrifying promise.

For one bleak moment, Poseidon is sure Sally Jackson's about to be an anonymous scorch mark on Montauk Beach.

Then Aphrodite is slapping a hand to her hip, leveling a brow at his nephew, and inexplicably Saving His Ass.

"_Not_ that it's any of your _business_, Phoebus, but I'll have you know that your very own Uncle Fish Breath's son and heir has been cavorting with one of my mortal daughters." She turns back to Poseidon, eyes flashing. "_After_ I made it _explicitly clear_ that I had other plans for her, and that she was _not_ to be touched." Poseidon slips smoothly into his assigned role.

"Triton is entitled to whatever vapid harlot from your brood he desires, Aphrodite—"

"Poseidon." Zeus rebukes, still glaring, though now for a different reason entirely. Poseidon swells with relief. "Have a talk with your brat, will you? Tell him to keep it in his…tail, or wherever it is your lot keep such things; there's no need for these meaningless hostilities." Says the poster child for both infidelity _and_ wanton wrath. Zeus pans his gaze toward Aphrodite. "Venus, if you'll excuse us. We have business."

Apollo looks knowingly from the goddess of love to the god of the sea, and Poseidon pretends he doesn't notice. Aphrodite sweeps Zeus a low bow and then shifts the Earth shaker a menacing grin.

"We are by no means finished with this, dearest Brother. I will contact you regarding this matter _very_ soon, rest assured. I hope our next meeting will find you by far more _gracious_." She smirks, dangerously, and then soundlessly vanishes, leaving behind only the lingering perfume of roses and pomegranate.

When Poseidon looks back at his brother, he startles to find something like rueful commiseration on Zeus's face.

"Just give her what she wants, Brother. Last time I tried to pawn off a goddess's daughter, Demeter nearly starved the entire planet. Terrifying, our women." Then, advice dispensed, "Now, to this Destruction of Mortals business…"

* * *

Some notes on this chapter: the events referred to at the beginning of the fic are drawn from REAL LIFE (dun-dun-dun), an off-shore incident near Alaska known as the _Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill_, which devastated the Prince William Sound and a fairly huge surrounding area in early 1989 (for the sake of this fic we must move the events from March to somewhere amidst the summer months), followed by several rather terrible natural disasters all throughout the 90s. Which is true of any decade, I suppose, but I have used these HORRIFYING TRAGEDIES for my own selfish purpose. Wooooo!

Also, Poseidon's 'venerable mother,' is of course, referring to Mama Earth. (Even though, technically, Rhea --not Gaia-- is his mother.)

And! Regarding the 'brother/cousin' business between Aphrodite and Poseidon...it's difficult to discern their precise relationship based on their respective mythologies; if anything, Aphrodite probably qualifies as more of an aunt to Poseidon than anything else. But I figure familial relationships have to be pretty fluid and arbitrary where the gods are concerned, anyway, what with them always having sex with each other and all. So. There's that.

Lemme know if ye' need anything else cleared up. I realize I'm Very Bad about spelling things out.

NEXT CHAPTER: poseidon exhibits a fondness for cosmetology. sally is an unflappable badass. amphitrite explores oceanus's endowments.


	5. overdue conversation

Sooooo...it's been more than a couple of days.

Whoops.

Korean Drama keeps GETTING IN THE WAY.

Meanwhile.

[luke, i am your disclaimer!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!]

* * *

_::Poseidon and Sally discuss life, love, and Aquaman::_

He's braiding starlight into her hair like so many dazzling barettes, the twinkling effulgence offsetting the opalescent pearl of her eyes. By now, he's willing to grant that she's the most splendid creature he's seen in more than a millennia, which is saying a great deal more than he thinks he ever actually will.

"I'm a god, you know." He informs her candidly, fingers curving the creamy-smooth arch of her throat, ghosting the camber of her graceful spine. She's a masterpiece, he muses, this little human made of clay.

For a full moment, she says nothing at all, and he begins entertaining the possibility that she hasn't heard him, that she's fallen to the lulling rhythm of the surf and missed his quiet revelation altogether. He scowls absently into the foam, and the waves roll back in mute terror, seeming to shrink as for miles and miles the sea abruptly quiets.

No sooner are they blanketed in the heavy, incongruous silence that Sally's musical laughter shatters it, ringing sonorously into the night sky. Poseidon spares a somewhat nervous glimpse up into the heavens, praying to…well, himself, that Zeus is off having an indiscretion of his own at the moment. Or, failing that, that Hera's In The Mood.

"That _does_ explain a few things." She says, at length, and he stares dumbly at the wistful smile quirking her lips. This modern ilk of human, in his experience, is not prone to so readily believing such a disclosure, and he discovers himself taken aback at her easy acceptance of what should be a fairly fantastical claim.

Uncertainly,

"You're not…surprised? You aren't going to freak out or call me crazy or demand proof?"

"Well, no offense or anything, Fish Breath, but you didn't exactly, um…_hide_ it very well. Maybe breathing underwater is no big whoop for you, but _I_ don't often date men who can ride sharks or subdue enormous sea monsters or routinely lug around enormous green pitchforks." Poseidon startles, sure he'd been consistently, _purposefully_ overlaying the image of his trident with a rotating reel of more commonplace objects, such as surf boards, a backpack, a fishing rod, the occasional iced latte. Seeing through the Mist was one thing, but effortlessly penetrating a deliberate veneer? Sally Jackson has just crossed over into Unfamiliar Territory. This is not a variety of mortal he's ever known.

For the moment, however,

"It's a _trident_, Sals." She purses her lips cutely at him over her shoulder and flaps her hand through the air, a playful dismissal.

"Pah. Pitchfork, trident. Po-tay-toe, puh-taw-toe." He chuckles, a basso rumble that vibrates through her where his knees are pressed against her thighs. "Anyway, I figured you had to either be Aquaman or something much, much higher up on the food chain. Like, _not human_." She lapses into a brief silence, considering. "Aquaman _is_ human, isn't he? Plus, part fish or something...?" He smiles absently.

"'Or something.'" Poseidon strings a row of ocean pearls into her dark hair. "I believe he was half-'Atlantean.' What that does or does not tell you about his humanity, I've no idea, but there you go."

"Well, _whatever_ he is, I suspected you were something…_more_." She pauses, a rueful frown fitting itself into the contours of her face. "And then there was…that incident with that very beautiful, very unhappy woman at the palace…Amphitrite, if I recall?" He sits in stony silence, disentangling his fingers from her long hair to drop into his lap. "I have to figure the reason she wasn't pleased to meet _me_ is because I was with _you_, and if what I've read is true, then Amphitrite would have little grounds for resenting me unless you were…um…I mean, I wasn't _certain_ or anything, but…you _are_ Poseidon, right? Or Neptune, or whatever you're calling yourself these days."

The waves outside roll contemplatively over the sand, and the temperature of the air drops slightly, noticeably.

"Yes." And then, face neutral, "You know of my wife."

"…yes." For a long moment, he is perfectly still, perfectly silent. "Reading's kinda my bread and butter, Fish Breath. Gotta know a thing or two about stories if I'm eventually gonna write my own."

"They are not _stories_." He insists, leveling a glare with no heat at her.

"They _are_ stories –some of my favorite stories. Timeless, classic stories of love and heroism and betrayal and _adventure_." Poseidon hears breathless exuberance in her voice, the jumping exhilaration of intellectual wonder. She shuffles around between his knees, twisting until she's at an appropriate angle to dust a kiss across his temple, and as he leans into her embrace, he catches a flash of her remarkable eyes, whorling from a milky sapphire to an inky gray. He closes his own eyes, committing the image to Indelible Memory Storage, and focuses on the sound of her breath, soft and even. "But I know that just because they're stories doesn't mean they aren't true. And the past few weeks have given me enough context clues to realize your stories definitely _are_ true." Sally sweeps cool hands across his hips, twining her fingers at his back. "And believe me, I was _plenty_ freaked out at first. I was ready to deal with a glowing, aquatic superhero. An ancient Greek _god_ was a horse of a different color. But you seemed nice enough for an invincible divinity, if a little pervy, so I decided I'd just get over myself and comes to terms with the whole 'this is totally impossible' part of the equation and give dating an immortal a go."

"Simple as that?" He wonders, amused.

"The sex made it easier to swallow." Sally grins, something decidedly, darkly impious about the tilt of her lips, sharply contrasting the halo of starlight at her crown.

She leans in to kiss him, mouth warm against his throat, and it is the end of the conversation for some time.

* * *

*'little human made of clay' -- often the original tribes of Greece were spoken of in literature as having been crafted from earth, or clay

One chapter left!

Thanks so-so-so much for all your wonderful reviews, kidlets. They make me swoon with de-light. Yes-huh.

Next Chapter: poseidon is naked pretty much the whole time. sally appreciates the view.


	6. immaculate conception

FINISHED!

This is essentially unprecedented for me (as far as series go), so you'll have to excuse the FLAILING GLEE I'm currently experiencing.

[it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a fic in possession of another author's characters must be in want of a disclaimer.]

* * *

_::Sally's (not-so-)immaculate conception:: _

"I've decided."

"On what, oh great and powerful lord of the sea?" Her playful baiting is by now old hat, and merits only softly wry reproval. Sally beams at him, impish.

"What I'm going to give you."

"Oh? I wasn't aware you were _planning_ to give me something. Apart from this scandalous summer sex romp, I mean." He slides her a devilish grin and traipses, naked, to the deck. She follows at a slower clip, stretching a thin sheet around her shoulders as her toes hit the aging wood. She lays her head comfortably against his shoulder and breathes him in, wild sea and sand and something electric-sweet, celestial and sublime and likely, she has to figure, a mark of his divinity.

"I'm going to give you the sea –a palace to rule and an empire to command at my side. I'll grant you eternal life and a throne of ocean pearl to sit upon by my side."

"…oh." She says, somewhat breathless. Poseidon turns to her with a poleaxed expression.

"You…don't sound thrilled."

"No, no. I am, I am. I was just expecting something a little less, um…ostentatious? Something I could wear in my hair maybe, or a lifetime supply of Poseidon Brand Bath Salts, not…not immortality and a kingdom." She tilts her face up to regard him, expression open and thoughtful. "I'm only…well, a little overwhelmed, is all. Not everyday a guy springs the 'let's _literally_ live together forever' proposal on you."

"So you will…accept, then?" His eyes are electric in the darkness, fierce, ancient, and discerning. There is no man on heaven or earth (or that Olympus In-Between), she concludes, more beautiful than this one. She kisses him, slow and lingering and sweet. "That did not feel like affirmation." In the distance, she hears the sea churning, restless, ominous.

She takes a deep breath, bracing herself.

"It's too much to bear, my love. We mortals weren't meant for eternity as it is, and what you ask is waaaay more than I've got to offer. I can…I can only give you one lifetime, nothing more; to expect more of me would be cruel." She smiles, wistful, sad. "Holding a god in thrall's no easy business, anyway. You'd tire of me eventually—"

"I would _never_—" She lays one cool digit over his lips, the slightest hint of pressure, and Posiedon falls immediately silent at the behest of this infinitely fragile human woman. He marvels.

"_I_ would tire of me eventually; I wasn't made for forever, and an obsessive love of Greco-Roman lore has taught me that you god-folk love strongly, passionately, and…and briefly." Sally falters, something breaking in the delicate furrow of her brow. He tucks her against him and huffs into her hair. "I've never harbored any illusions about us, Poseidon. I understand that the rules are a little different when you're immortal, invincible, and bored."

"Do you?" The tone of his voice is flat, faraway.

"I mean…obviously, I don't _understand_, not really; that'd be impossible. But I never fooled myself into thinking this'd be anything more than what it is –an absurd, incredible, unforgettable fling." Melancholy hews the musical lilt of her voice. "You have to be free to love as you choose, and I'm…" She quiets, breathing deeply. Then, with the same sad resolve in her eyes that, years from now, will flash with humbling certainty in their son's gaze when he, too, turns down the gift of eternal life, "I'm not willing to be the chain that binds you." Sally smiles past the tears that slip over her cheeks, soundless grief overlaid by quiet joy. "You can't tame the sea, Fish Breath. It simply isn't done."

The sudden insight her simple proclamation inspires is nigh epiphanic. He realizes why she can See things for what they really are, how she discerns truth regardless of its shape or consequence; she sees through the Mist because sees through _all_ guises and pretense. There is no façade through which she cannot immediately penetrate, no reality too great for her to believe or endure. Sally Jackson is a woman of consummate sincerity and strength; peerless, invincible in her own right.

This time it is he who meets her for a kiss, tender and savage and bittersweet.

"You," he whispers, "you are a queen among women. The mortals don't deserve you. And, I suppose," he reflects, pulling away, "I don't, either." And then, before she has time to attempt to stop him, he kneels before her, fist to floor, in a position of fealty. She blinks down at him in stupefaction. "Let this be my oath to you now, Sally Jackson; you have the highest blessing of the gods, and my utmost esteem. When your time has come, I will greet you in the afterlife and plead your case personally for peace eternal." He lifts his eyes to regard her, and a sly smile worms its way onto his face. "I just so happen to know the guy who runs the place."

In lieu of being mortified or dumbfounded, Sally Jackson cocks a brow and a hand to her hip, wiping tears from her face and grinning,

"I bet you say that to all the mortal women you woo."

"I do not, however, make a habit of promising to erect palaces for these mortal women to live."

"Touche."

And then,

"Would that work, though, d'you think? The 'peace eternal' thing. As a line, I mean." Sally shoves her foot against his shoulder, knocking the Earthshaker flat on his butt.

* * *

Much later that evening, Poseidon pulls himself up onto an elbow, traces meandering shapes over moon-washed skin, lays absent kisses at the naked curve of Sally's hip, reverent and ravenous. He finds that he can't stop touching her, that he fears for when he inevitably must.

"I would be remiss, you realize, if I neglected now to reward you with something suitably extraordinary after you so boldly refused my generous, initial offer."

"Just leave the cash on the dresser," she mumbles sleepily, turning to curl into his warmth. He laughs at her bawdy insinuation and drags his hand lazily over her thigh, leaning to catch his teeth at her throat as her breath shallows.

"'Cash on the dresser,' hmm…? Does that mean in this scenario you'll be wearing pumps and fishnets?"

"Ha ha." She rejoins dryly, smacking him lightly against his bicep. And then, after a considerable pause he very much uses to his advantage, "_Fish_nets! Oh, I kill me…" Sally dissolves into hopeless giggling at his inadvertent pun, and he makes short work of truncating her laughter, his mouth working its way up the column of her throat to seal itself glibly over hers.

"Surely there is something you could ask of me; if it's within my power to give, Sally," his teeth close over her earlobe, and she arches against him with a breathless sigh, "then you'll have it. Only say the word and it's yours." Before he can wreak any more havoc against her senses, she slides her palm over his mouth, appraising him thoughtfully in the darkness.

"This is the twentieth century, your royal fishiness. These days you don't _pay_ the women you sleep with unless…well, um…unless that's what they _usually_ get paid for." Poseidon kisses her palm, plucks her hand away at the wrist, smiles fondly down at her.

"Think of my want to give you something as less a payment for services rendered than as a…mark of my favor." She snorts indelicately.

"That is a _veeeery_ thin line you've drawn, Fish Breath."

"All the same." She sighs, exasperated, pulling herself still closer against him, hands tangled in the velveteen mess of his hair.

"If you _insist_ on leaving me something—"

"Oh, I do."

"—then all I'd like is…a token, something to remember you by. Nothing fancy. Something ordinary, but something…meaningful. Something I can love forever and ever. Something I only have to look at to remember…everything, all of this, _you_."

In an instant, it all becomes resoundingly clear to him.

Apollo's obnoxious allusions to his oracle's premonitions (_"Anyway, more recently, my mummy's been saying some very peculiar things about _you_, of all deities. Obviously, I'm not too clear on the details, but the mention of such arresting phrases as 'affection for the Curse of Man,' 'highly and explicitly forbidden,' and 'impending catastrophe' got me to thinking --you haven't got a new squeeze, have you?"_), Aphrodite's untoward interrogation (_"I made no mention of The Pact because I hadn't realized it was_…relevant_. The only thing explicitly outlined as 'against the rules' regarding your dalliances was…the gift of progeny, if I recall?"_), and her equally, appallingly deliberate insinuation (_"Besides, the young Miss Jackson is far too young for the challenges of motherhood."_) –he knows precisely what he's going to give her.

Zeus and Hades are going to be _pissed_.

"I've got just the thing," he tells her gingerly, laying his hand flat against her stomach and kissing her, hungry and urgent and demanding. "It's the one thing I promised my brothers I'd never give another mortal woman." She goggles up at him. "But my nephew appears convinced that I'm destined to break that promise. For you." Before she has time to press him for more information, his lips are pressing into the soft flesh of her abdomen, a lingering, chaste kiss that makes her hum to her toes.

And then her belly starts to _glow_, a soft, seafoam green.

Sally startles and gapes at him. Poseidon awards her a brilliantly smug smile.

"Did you just—" He lays his fingers against her lips, abruptly silencing her.

"You mustn't speak of it. It is my gift and my blessing to you, Sally Jackson, my promise that you will be the only woman for me for the remainder of your mortal life."

"Except your wife." She dutifully hastens to remind him. He clears his throat.

"…right, except her. Obviously."

Sally's lips fall tenderly at his cheek. Her eyes are wet with unshed tears when she whispers her gratitude, and it is a moment he swears never, ever to forget.

* * *

Many shout-outs to canon in this chapter; extra love to those of you who catch all the references.

Really and truly, thanks so much for all your kickass reviews. Made this whole fic worth writing. ^_^

Ciao, love muffins~


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